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Vice President Pence Visits Miami For Launch Of Phase 3 Of COVID Vaccine Clinical Trial

Al Diaz
/
Miami Herald
Vice President Mike Pence during a previous visit to South Florida.

With President Donald Trump’s poll numbers flagging in Florida as the state continues to struggle with one of the nation’s highest rates of new COVID-19 cases, Vice President Mike Pence visited the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine on Monday afternoon to focus attention on one of the pandemic’s few potential bright spots: the rapid development of a vaccine against the disease.

Pence touched down at Miami International Airport at about 12:30 p.m. on Monday. He walked off the plane with Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Both wore masks, as is required in public in Miami-Dade County under an order from Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who greeted the vice president at the plane along with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis and Gimenez wore masks.

Pence greeted DeSantis and Gimenez by bumping forearms. They spoke on the runway for about five minutes, reviewed a document DeSantis was carrying and then the vice president waved at onlookers before climbing into a Chevy Suburban, part of a motorcade that took Pence and Hahn to the UM medical school’s campus in downtown Miami for a round table meeting to discuss progress of the vaccine.

Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.

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